What The Duck: More Unnecessary 8-Bit Retromancy

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Look here, I liked Duck Tales – cartoon and game alike – well enough when I were a lad, but do we really need to pillage every last dusty coin from the tomb of ancient videogaming? Disney’s already having the Castle of Illusion remade in spangle-vision, and now another anthropomorphic animal platformer is getting tarted up and resold to people who can remember when all this were fields. Previously only announced for the toyboxes, we now hear that Capcom will also be releasing Duck Tales: Higher Resolution Version on PC, which I guess is good news if you’re one of those who can’t stop fiddling with your nostalgia glans. Have a look, and a singalong, below.
Question: why do ducks get to live in Duckburg, but there isn’t even one real-life city called Humanburg? Such an oversight.

It is true that that is something familiar from my childhood. I feel so very warm and comforted now, as if I were back in the womb, or at least the front room of that kid I didn’t really like from school, but who had a Sega Master System.

Here’s how the original looked, if you’d like to compare and contrast. The same, but with less pixels, basically.

Right, that’s enough being sneery about remakes of old games, I’m off to play Xenonauts. Oh.

Duck Tales Rejiggered will be out at some point over the Summer, costing $15 and available on Steam, Origin, Impulse, GamersGate, Green Man Gaming and undisclosed others.

THIS. So much this. You, SIr, just brought back a ton of memories. I remember playing a Duck Tales game that involved flying, spelunking (with mummies), photographing on safari and much more. I just couldn’t ever remember the name. Off to the Youtubes!

We asked for this, seeing how biggest Kickstarter projects are basically “games like they were 20 years ago with better graphics and stuff”. Big publishers also want that money, but they would look silly saying “we don’t have money” (and quite possibly causing quite an uproar with shareholders…), so they go for next thing – giving us exactly-same-stuff from 20 years ago with better graphics.

Nothing particularly wrong about that. It’s not as if games are inherently made to be unplayable for more than a few years. It’s just that a lof the games don’t age very well and could do with some simple control and graphical rejuvenation. Some games were so splendidly made that ALL they ever needed was a facelift (and I don’t even necessarily mean graphical fidelity, but more like support for today’s resolution standards). Heck, people have been crying out for SC to be simply remade with more modern graphics, but untouched otherwise, for years, but then SC2 was announced and all hopes were dashed.

Much more interested in Dungeons and Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, which is a collection of HD-ified old arcade beat ’em up games. Both of which were/are bloody brilliant and seem to be getting a release on practically everything, from PC to Wii U.

Wow, i had no idea that was coming out. Thanks! But on a sidenote, it drives me nuts how they can get away with calling these rereleases “HD”, when in reality the graphics are untouched, they just slap a simple fullscreen scaling filter over it that has been standard in emulators for a decade.

I had missed this one then stumbled on it while looking through mame games. I think what I really miss is the arcade style of big detailed sprites and arena like sound effects. I’m not really in love with this style of gameplay though and would rather see it improved upon somewhat…not a total change, just some tweaks to the formula, tilt the camera so you can judge depth easier, add some sort of block/attack system that is more robust etc.

I believe this is not a simple nostalgia tickle, but a meta-tickle. By which I mean it is not meant for the guys who loved (remember fondly is probably more apt) the original themselves, but it is meant to be bought by them for their kids. “Bridging the generational gap!” will probably be a part of the marketing.

If capcom use the same inept pc conversion people as their other games then this will no doubt come out in the year 2123 where animals have out evolved and out lasted us to the point that this game is an accurate reflection of the state of pornography.

So has anyone actually played the original since the early 90s? I know it’s a classic, but I’m curious as to whether there’s anything about it that makes it compelling in this day and age, besides nostalgia, when it has to compete with the likes of Dust: An Elysian Tale.

Actually there are good sir. I play through Duck Tales 2 at least once a year. Loved it back then, still find this game interesting and fresh. The first one is good too, I just don’t play it so often.
The level design in Duck Tales was very good, and every level was different: every level had it’s own mood, it’s unique style of puzzles, it almost was a different game. And this pogo stick – it was awesome. Well, that was a long long time ago, when games based on tv series often were GOOD.

Thanks to Savygamer’s own Lewie P on the “Twitter” for sharing this IGN side-by-side comparison of Duck Tales old and new.
I, for one, am grateful for constant gameplay-stopping cutscenes. Because sometimes I may start to have fun if I’m allowed to just get on and play a game without having control wrested from me all the sodding time.

In Rob Balder’s webcomic/prose thing Erfworld, which I don’t necessarily recommend for everyone but follow rabidly, there’s ‘retconjuration’.. It’s slotted into the school of ‘naughtymancy’, i.e. evil stuff, and its existence is itself an apologetic retcon publicly executed after he wrote himself into a big plot hole.

I understand Scrooge’s Scottish accent is something from the DuckTales series. I saw it in Dutch, so the accent sounds weird to me but from a realistic standpoint, would Scrooge McDuck even have such a thick Scottish accent. He left Scotland in his teens I think and spends the rest of his life among Americans. Wouldn’t he have lost most of his accent by the time he’s doing the DuckTales things with his nephews?

Quackshot!!! Thank you! That’s the game I was thinking of while reading this article. I don’t remember this Duck Tales game but I do remember Quackshot on the Megadrive, the music was fantastic One of the few platformers of the time that was a joy to replay (if a little easy in comparison with Sonic, etc).

Capcom actually had a pretty good handle on platformers in the late 80s. Not only did they have Ducktales, but the other Disney licenses were generally pretty good, too (Rescue Rangers leaps to mind).

Little Nemo is actually a very good (and oft forgotten) game, too. And let’s not forget the Blue Bomber and his 6 (!) NES games. There’s a lot of shooting and blowing things up in Mega Man, but they are definitely platformers.

Hm. Even though the original was actually the first game I’ve ever played through, I don’t think I’m interested in this. I’d probably get more out of playing the original game with an Emulator than playing a remake.

Something about the 3D models is bothering me. Maybe the art direction between them and the hand-drawn stuff just isn’t meshing, I’m not sure, but I really dislike the way the chests and the items coming from the chests (like the gems) look.